Help desks are often employed to help manage an information technology (IT) operation. The term “help desk” generally refers to an information and assistance resource that troubleshoots problems with computers, software, and similar products. A help desk is often the central point of contact between service providers and users/customers. Companies and organizations often provide help desk support to their customers while in-house help desks provide similar support specifically for employees.
The term “service desk” often refers to functionality associated with the integration of business processes into a service management infrastructure. Service desks often provide active monitoring of system incidents and user questions, as well as providing an interface for other activities such as customer change requests, third parties (e.g. maintenance contracts), and software licensing.
As used herein, the term “incident” refers to any event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which causes, or may cause, an interruption or a reduction of the quality of the service. Incidents are frequently the result of failures or errors in the IT infrastructure. Thus, the objective of incident management (IM) is to restore normal operations as quickly as possible with the least possible impact on either the business providing the service or the user of the service.
The terms “service desk” and “help desk” are used interchangeably herein to refer to any IT functionality associated with incident management. Such functionality can include (in addition to the functionality described above) incident detection and recording, incident classification and initial support, incident investigation and diagnosis, incident resolution and recovery, incident closure, and incident ownership, tracking, monitoring and communication, etc.
Increasingly, companies and organizations rely on multiple computer and IT-related products, services and solutions to meet business needs. For example, a company might use enterprise software to model an entire business enterprise, while also using a variety of other third party applications to further enhance productivity. In addition, it is likely that the company runs the software using hardware from multiple vendors, etc. Each of these products and services may have an associated help desk system or tool (or simply, help desk) to help troubleshoot problems, exchange information, etc. However, traditional help desks cannot be integrated with other help desks. In other words, companies employing a variety of products and services are often forced to communicate in isolation with each of various help desks in order to solve a problem.